Category: lunchtime poems

this morning the MAX feels
like it did when i visited
10 years ago. a sense of promise.
a newness from the gray sky
and thin rivulets of rainwater
descending from the glass.
10 years ago i was with you,
a brief important moment,
a catalyst for the next part
of my life. a flash in the pan.
we built it up like stone-by-stone,
but it could never hold back
the floor. the flood that
came fast, drowned deep,
and receded too quickly.
i treaded water when
i should have drowned
with you.

The year begins
With the ebb and flow
Of a headache.
I keep watching people from the bleachers
And glance away when they spot me spying.
A woman whose butt I admired
As she walked away has returned,
Seeking a seat in the same bleachers
I’m sitting at. (I couldn’t help it,
It was the jeans. It’s always the jeans.)
Every woman is wearing riding boots,
Well dressed equestrianesses.
Some guy looks like my friend Ryan King
If he had a Hitler mustache.
I should make sure it’s not him.

Shuffleboard bros,
You take this game
Too seriously.
Stacked pucks
And windbreakers,
Inevitable bar fables
About the women
You’ve “taken.”
A fireside chat
About your golf game.
I am envious
Of your simplicity.12

Man in handkerchief shirt.
The pattern foils TV screens.
Your jeans, too long,
Must be rolled up,
For fashion?
Your shoes are the least-
Looking shoes I’ve ever seen.
I thought they were socks
Like athletic socks
Like you are “too cool”
For indoor shoes,
You zen-fueled guy–
But no, they are shoes
Like if a medieval peasant
Made a pair of Reeboks.
Rébocke: a Gentle Man’s shue.
You have the face
That every man from Ohio
Or Iowa
Or one of those Midwestern states has,
Resplendent with short ginger hair
And portly face.
The face of a European king.

Woman in mustard top.
Women alone always seem
More lonely than men,
Their social nature
Seemingly stripped,
Earbuds nestled in their ears,
The latest true crime podcast
Softly wafting into their ear canal.
From her perspective,
A pleasant respite from
Constant attention.
She vigorously shakes a
Plastic tub of salad.
Does she laugh while eating it?
I can’t tell, she sat away from me.

He smokes on a park bench
By the stone garbage can,
Scrolling mindlessly
On his phone.
Probably reading sports things.
He looks like a guy
Who reads sports things
On his phone during his lunch break,
And knows stats on all the players,
Which he memorized in his “man cave.”
The bald spot on his head
Looks like he wore a
Yarmulke too long,
And the hair underneath
Withered away.
It’s perfectly circular.

Man in suit
standing amid park trees,
between the two hill mounds,
on the concrete
where the Aztecs danced
for the white people.
Gray suit, nice suit,
tailored and trimmed,
blue shirt, no tie.
Standing stylishly in the center,
on hold, his phone to his ear.
Standing stylishly because
he is in the center
and someone nice
might walk by and look at him.
Left hand in pocket,
black eyeglasses, short spiked hair.
Broad shouldered
or just nice shoulder pads
in his gray suit.
He left, unable to reach his party.